The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has announced it will shut down almost all of its accounts on Elon Musk’s platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The move comes after a number of high profile ABC journalists were subject to targeted online abuse, including Lisa Millar, Leigh Sales and Stan Grant.
“The ABC has decided to further reduce our activity on X (formerly known as Twitter) and focus our effort on the accounts that overwhelmingly provide the most value,” the national broadcaster said in a statement released on Wednesday.
“We have found that closing individual program accounts helps limit the exposure of team members to the sometimes toxic interactions that unfortunately are becoming more prominent.
“Concerningly, X has reduced its trust and safety teams.”
The ABC revealed it would be retaining the ABC news, sport, national and the Chinese-language accounts, but closing all others effective immediately.
Hi everyone. This account is now closed. Please follow @abcnews for latest news.
— ABC Politics (@politicsabc) February 19, 2023
In February this year, the ABC shut down the Insiders, News Breakfast and ABC Politics accounts on Musk’s platform, which he renamed as X in late July.
“The results from (those closures) have been positive,” the statement said.
“The vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience is located on other platforms and we want to focus our effort and resources where our audiences are.”
The ABC also cited the requirement to subscribe to X Premium – known as Twitter Blue at the time of the change – to verify accounts with a blue checkmark as one of the reasons for the closure of ABC accounts.
“X is introducing charges which are making the platform increasingly costly to use,” the ABC’s statement said.
In April, CEO of X Elon Musk labelled the ABC and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) as “government-funded media”, sparking concerns that the label could elicit assumptions that the broadcasters lack objectivity and independence.
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States were labelled by Musk as “state-affiliated media” earlier this year. Although this was later changed to “government-funded media”, PBS and NPR closed their X accounts.
In May this year, ABC veteran journalist Stan Grant stepped down from his role as host of the ABC’s program Q+A, following the lack of action taken by the broadcaster in responding to the “relentless racist filth” he faced on social media platforms, including X.
“To those who have abused me and my family. I would just say if your aim was to hurt me, well you’ve succeeded, and I’m sorry,” he said in his final appearance on Q+A.
“I’m sorry that I must have given you so much cause to hate me so much, to target me and my family and to make threats against me. I’m sorry.”
The ABC apologised to Grant and said it would conduct a review of its response to racism.